“So the ‘l’ in laurel and the ‘yuh’ in yanny are very similar to each other in specific ways with the sound patterns them-self,” he says. “There’s a similar thing happening with the ‘n’ and the ‘r’ later on in the word too, and again if you missed that cue, you’ll hear the ‘r’ as an ‘n’ and so get from laurel to yanny.”

Also, the distance you hear from and the listening device matters.

“If I listen to it on a phone versus on a computer, or on the radio, or any kind of other different kinds of speakers, it changes what I heard,” Toscano says.

If you hear yanny, you may have interpreted a higher pitch. If you hear laurel the pitch is lower.

Credit: CBS3

The debacle was like an audio version of “The Dress” — a photo that went viral in 2015 when no one could agree whether the garment it showed was white and gold or blue and black, confirming that people will debate just about anything on the internet.